Friday, March 14, 2008

And, we're back

I know at least a few of you are expecting a good ranting this morning.

Not gonna happen.

Because it would be an awful lot like being an ungrateful ass, that's why.

As you may infer from my last post, and the one I had Beastly put up, I was seriously pissed at my ISP. I'm not going to apologize for that, however I'm am a bit chagrined at letting my frustration get the best of me. But what you have to understand is this: I'm this way because I was trained this way. Beastly and Janiece can back me up on this, Chiefs are trained in a particular manner and if there's one thing that defines us it's this: Chiefs don't make excuses. Period. And they don't accept them either. Warrants are the same, only more so. Our job is to get things done. When I feel like I'm getting the runaround or a bunch of excuses - I get pissed, fairly quickly.

When I made that last post I was waiting for a call back from GCI Customer Service, which, according the the guy who originally answered the phone, would be no more than two hours. Didn't happen, and as I said in the post, I'd decided then and there that come morning I was going to go looking for a new service provider.

I did get a call the next morning from Customer Service, I wasn't even remotely impressed with the customer service rep's attitude. Eventually she transferred me to Tech Support. The Tech Support rep, Tony, was a completely different story. He was helpful, cheerful, knowledgeable and willing to listen to my rant. He obviously knew his business, but there wasn't much he could do other than set me up for a service visit the next day. But, you know, I sure appreciated his attitude and willingness to listen.

Then regular commenter Jeri got involved.

Which resulted in a phone call from the Customer Service Manager, Manuel Hernandez, who as it turns out is a hell of a decent guy. I won't go into detail, but I came away from the conversation with a different attitude towards GCI.

Bright and early yesterday morning, the service crew was out front. I watched them run back and forth for an hour, trouble shooting. Then, I got a phone call from the service tech out on the pole, Jeremy, explaining that they'd found the problem. One of the recently upgraded distribution amplifiers had failed, which would square with the nonexistent signal strength I was seeing. He had to go get some additional equipment in order to replace it. Which he did. And that fixed it.

An hour after that, Mr. Hernandez called me back to make sure I was up and running.

So, here's the thing: Out of the five people that I was directly involved with at GCI, one of them gave me attitude, but four of them acted as if I was their single most valuable customer and they bent over backwards to make sure I got the service I was paying for. Once I got through to Tech Support, I got no excuses, they admitted up front that it was GCI's issue and they did everything humanly possible to fix the situation as quickly as possible.

I called Jeri to thank her personally for her efforts on my behalf. It should be fairly obvious that there's a certain amount of professional risk when you get involved in a public blog where people are bashing your employer, and I'm grateful that she was willing to take such a risk.

So, I've rethought my position as follows: I'm not at all happy with the fact that I lost service for four days - however, if Jeri, Manuel, Tony, and Jeremy are examples of the type of people employed by GCI, then I'm more than willing to give them a second chance.

So, as I said above, sorry to disappoint you, but ranting about folks who busted their collective asses to make me happy would be pretty obnoxious, even for me.

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Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got a splitting headache and four days worth of work I need to get caught up on.

On a similar note, my brand new cable modem service (5Mbit, thank you very much) has been performing much like a crippled monkey running floppy disks back and forth from the 'net for me.

After several calls, fluff offs, and "I'm a friggen network administrator, don't tell me it's just the sun and will clear up soon" -- the crew discovered that the distribution amplifier down the street was in fact not there.

The service guys were rather amused with this, because it showed itself as being there in their blueprints. It's effects, however, did not show on my cable signal.

A new one was ordered, and my account was credited. So no rants from me either.

Shawn's comment made me laugh, despite the fact that it makes my head hurt - sunspots, the old communications tech excuse (back in the day when we communicated via RF in the HF portion of the spectrum there was some validity to the comment, cable wise - not so much).

And thanks to you and to the whole gang for your kind comments. I really DID NOT DO ALL THAT MUCH. I sent a three-line email to the customer service management team - Manuel and the technical crew did all the heavy lifting.

And yes, Manuel is awesome. In addition to being a great manager, he's actually a good personal friend and has been a mentor to my boys.

I will tell a tiny tale out of school... Manuel commented to me that Jim is "a very nice guy in person."

While technically a correct statement, this is in fact a hypothetical situation in as much as a Navy Chief has never actually been wrong. Upon occasion it has appeared that the Chief was mistaken, but that turned out to be an observational error on the part of the Junior Officer, who was himself wrong...

I think it's also because the first person is the main contact manning the phones, of which few people call to say, "Hey, everything is fargin' wonderful, thanks." Attitudes can develop there. The other people are the ones who get the shit blown up, you know. They tend to be most helpful.

Comments on this blog are moderated. Each will be reviewed before being allowed to post. This may take a while. I don't allow personal attacks, trolling, or obnoxious stupidity. If you post anonymously and hide behind an IP blocker, I'm a lot more likely to consider you a troll. Be sure to read the commenting rulesbefore you start typing. Really.

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Jim Wright is a retired US Navy Chief Warrant Officer and freelance writer. He lived longer in Alaska than anywhere else and misses it terribly. He recently moved to the fetid Panhandle of Florida and lives now in an ancient Cold War bunker of a house surrounded by alligators and rednecks. He's been called the Tool of Satan, but he prefers to think of himself as the Devil's Designated Driver. He is the mind behind Stonekettle Station. You can email him at jim@stonekettle.com. You can follow him on Twitter @stonekettle, or you can join the boisterous bunch he hosts on Facebook at Facebook/Stonekettle. Remember to bring brownies and mind the white cat, he bites. Hard.

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